Regarding the letter “The Root Cause” in The Times Argus, I feel I should take a moment to offer some facts and a reason-based perspective regarding climate change. First of all, I am in no way stating that we shouldn’t do everything we can in our day-to-day lives to reduce our undesirable impact on the environment.

First fact: The planet has undergone multiple climate changes, far more drastic than anything we’ve experienced throughout geological history; none were caused by people. The planet has been coming out of an ice age since the dinosaurs went away — an ice age that was caused by emissions from a cataclysmic event, not people.

Second fact: In the scope of geologic time, we have not existed for a significant amount of time, let alone been gathering climate data for a significant amount of time. Therefore, the data on hand could not be used to draw a conclusion one way or the other on our impact on climate change. We can’t conclude that more drastic changes didn’t occur before our existence.

Third fact: The scientific method, which is the only means by which a conclusion can be drawn in any experiment, requires a control — a like model that is not exposed to the same factors as are being tested. As there is no possible way to have a control to this “experiment” (no way to have an Earth without humans to observe and gather data from), there can be no conclusion.

Fourth fact: Our greenhouse gas emission projections for the year 2030 (from the U.S. Department of Energy) have dropped by 28 percent in the last five years. China is now the biggest polluter on the planet. China’s industry should be the current focus on reducing carbon emissions — not the U.S. If you want to impact global emissions, don’t buy anything made in China, and voice your opinion/vote against U.S. policy that continues to borrow money from China to fund pork programs. To expect a suffocating economy to make up for the disregard of China for the environment will surely be our demise.

Once again, I am by no means saying we shouldn’t do everything we can to protect the environment, but to deny that the environmental movement has long ago been hijacked for use as a political lever to sway uninformed voters and opinion would be absolutely ignorant. Any scientist that “concludes” global warming is man-caused, or even man-influenced loses all credibility. This is not my opinion — this is a fact as illustrated by the scientific method. You don’t even need to see the data to know it’s inconclusive at best.